Boeing whistleblower John Barnett claimed the company’s management had spied on him while giving testimony for a case, the New York Post reports.

Barnett allegedly committed suicide in Charleston, South Carolina, while giving a deposition in a whistleblower lawsuit against the company.

The 62-year-old former Boeing employee was found deceased inside his truck at a hotel on March 9th.

Barnett’s attorneys released the complaint Wednesday out of transparency after Barnett’s mysterious death.

From the New York Post:

The lawsuit makes a number of bombshell claims about Boeing — currently under scrutiny after a series of quality control problems, including a door plug falling off mid-flight — charging they retaliated against Barnett when he tried to raise the alarm about defaults in their manufacturing process.

Barnett said he suffered numerous instances of retaliation after internally reporting the airplane giant’s failure to comply with Federal Aviation Authority safety standards.

The lawsuit said he was subjected to a “gaslighting campaign in which he was continually harassed, denigrated, humiliated, and treated with scorn and contempt by upper management.”

Another section of the lawsuit stated: “In June 2014, Barnett submitted a complaint to Corporate Ethics against [redacted] for violating procedures, ignoring process violations, pushing Barnett to ‘work in the grey areas,’ and having another manger spy on Barnett.

“Although Barnett’s complaint was substantiated by Corporate Ethics, no action was taken to address the complaints.”

Barnett retired in 2017 after more than 30 years of service with Boeing, which he said was 10 years earlier than he had planned due to the actions he claimed were taken against him.

“That’s the way it’s done there. There were always moles who would throw you under the bus to look good to the big bosses. They weren’t about team unity; you never know who you could trust,” a Boeing mid-level manager, who asked to remain anonymous over fear of losing their job, told The Post Wednesday.

A family friend of Barnett, identified as Jennifer, previously told ABC 4 she knows “that he did not commit suicide.”

Barnett allegedly said: “if anything happens to me, it’s not suicide.”

“If Anything Happens To Me, It’s Not Suicide”, Deceased Boeing Whistleblower Allegedly Said

“There’s no way. He loved life too much. He loved his family too much. He loved his brothers too much to put them through what they’re going through right now,” she said.

WATCH:

Jennifer, who reportedly last saw Barnett in late February at her father’s funeral, said she thinks someone “didn’t like what he had to say” and wanted to “shut him up.”

“That’s why they made it look like a suicide,” she commented.

Barnett’s attorneys voiced their doubts he committed suicide.

“We didn’t see any indication he would take his own life,” attorneys Robert Turkewitz and Brian Knowles, who represent Barnett, said in a statement earlier this week.

“No one can believe it,” they added.

They said the Charleston police need to investigate Barnett’s death fully, accurately, and leave no detail unturned.

Per Fox News:

The coroner’s office told Fox News Digital that he died from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The official coroner’s report was not yet available. City police said they were investigating the circumstances of his death.

“We are all devastated,” his attorneys, Robert Turkewitz and Brian Knowles, told Fox News Digital.

“We need more information about what happened to John. The Charleston police need to investigate this fully and accurately and tell the public what they find out. No detail can be left unturned.”

They said Barnett was planning to complete his deposition and move on with his life after his decades-long Boeing career ended in a retaliation lawsuit after he uncovered and went public with safety problems in the 787 Dreamliner.

“He was in very good spirits and really looking forward to putting this phase of his life behind him and moving on,” the attorneys said. “We didn’t see any indication he would take his own life. No one can believe it.”

Barnett worked for Boeing for over three decades before retiring in 2017 as a quality control engineer. In 2019, Barnett told the BBC that Boeing would rush to get its 787 Dreamliner jets off the production line, compromising safety.

 

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